Monday, March 15, 2010

Windows 7 - Time Will Tell.....

It's been an interesting week, and that has a lot to do with the lack of posts. For the last week I've been busy building, loading, configuring, and tweaking a new computer. Part of the challenge and large amount of time consumption is the result of installing Windows 7. As far as I can see, Windows 7 is basically Windows Vista - Release 2, with most of the really obnoxious stuff everyone complained about either tamed down or turned off.

I wish I had a buck for every time it told me I don't have the right permissions to do whatever I was trying to do. At times it was eerily bordering on "I'm sorry, Mr. C., but I can't do that......" sort of experience. Granted, my setup and requirements are fairly complicated compared to an average home computer, and there is a lot of older software I needed to keep functional. At last, I finally have all the essential stuff working.

I considered just going with XP, but that's means I'd be two operating systems behind, and it would just be that much sooner until I had to go through the whole mess again. So far, now that I've got WIN7 tweaked and tuned a bit, it seems to run just fine. Considering that just about every version of Windows sucked when it was first released, I think WIN7 should continue in that direction, and may actually turn out to be OK in the long run. In fact, it might even be pretty good. Time will tell.

Up until Windows ME, you could always reinstall over the top of your current Windows version when Windows got messed up. When you did this, all of your files and software would still be there and usually still functional. From Windows 2000 on, it's not that simple. In theory, the system restore would allow you to change your computer back to just before it got fouled up, but usually when the computer was messed up, so was system restore, and it wouldn't work.

If I wasn't locked in in such a way that I have to stay with some version of Windows I think I'd give Linux a try. However, that's not a viable option for me, so WIN7, here we go.................

2 Comments:

Roger the struggle.Went with win 7 ultimate.Got most of the old software to work by using the 'check compatibility' feature BEFORE trying to run the software.After a month or so, it's getting fairly stable, and likeable.